Top 10 World Music CDs

It takes a lot to catapult yourself out of the pack and young electro-acoustic bossa nova singers. Brazilian coquette Cibelle did it by sourrounding her soft, girlish vocals with imaginative bits of humming, clicking, stuttering electronics, samples of rattling cutlery, and other elements that might ordinarily seem disruptive, but in fact worked to create an alternate universe of sound. In the center of it all, she sat self-possessed and serene, half-murmring her multilingual lyrics (and those of Tom Waits and Caetano Veloso). Cameo appearances from Devendra Banhart and Seu Jorge were sops to the uncertain, but Cibelle succeeds on her own artistic terms.